


It's Okay To Worry

by Spideyfan62



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Can Be As Canon Compliant As You Want, F/M, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Mother Daughter Bonding, Mother-Daughter Relationship, POV Michelle Jones, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:07:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27641159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spideyfan62/pseuds/Spideyfan62
Summary: "Who's the..." M.J. stood up and spun around to discover her 13 year old daughter, Annie, staring at the television from the hallway, eyes wide and hands over her mouth."Annie?" M.J. questioned, immediately running over to her and Peter's only child. "What are you doing up?""I...I was coming out to get a drink," her daughter stammered, her eyes still trained on the television. "Is...is dad going to be okay?"
Relationships: Michelle Jones & Annie Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Comments: 4
Kudos: 49





	It's Okay To Worry

**Author's Note:**

> In this story: M.J. helps her daughter understand an important lesson about dealing with her father's lifestyle.

M.J. could do nothing but stare at the news report. What she thought would be a nice night of watching reruns of I Survived until Peter returned home from patrol turned into waiting for any word on him to emerge from an old refinery that was lit ablaze and only getting worse by the second. The report said that Spider-Man had gone into the building to rescue hostages being held there by the Mark Raxton, whom the media had dubbed "Molten Man" after he displayed the ability to create and throw fireballs. Supposedly, he was holding the hostages in the hope that who he held responsible would be guilted into creating a cure, but clearly Peter believed that wasn't going to happen. 

The good news was that the hostages were all safe. The bad news was, Peter was still in there, fighting the monster in order to make sure everyone was safe, like always. It always had to be him. 

Her late night bowl of apple slices forgotten, M.J. simply stared at the television screen, trying and failing to prevent tears from trickling down her face. It didn't matter how many times she had seen this story before; her and Peter had been through 15 years of marriage and 20 years of being together total, but seeing him in danger still produced the same paralyzing fear and shock that it in the beginning. She was so caught up in hoping for any updates on the situation that she nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard a gasp behind her. 

"Who's the..." M.J. stood up and spun around to discover her 13 year old daughter, Annie, staring at the television from the hallway, eyes wide and hands over her mouth. 

"Annie?" M.J. questioned, immediately running over to her and Peter's only child. "What are you doing up?" 

"I...I was coming out to get a drink," her daughter stammered, her eyes still trained on the television. "Is...is dad going to be okay?"

M.J.'s first thought was to try and assure her daughter that her father was going to be fine. While her and Peter were pretty open overall with their daughter about his crime fighting activities, this was exactly the kind of thing they had wanted to shield her from for as long as possible. Sure, she KNEW her dad put his life on the line, but seeing it...that was another matter entirely. However, M.J. couldn't find it in herself to give her daughter false hope either. 

"I hope so," she settled on. 

Her heart broke as her daughter's eyes welled up instantly, a couple sobs coming from her throat. 

"Do you...do you want to sit in your room and have me tell you when it's over, or do you wait it out here?" M.J. asked. Now that Annie had seen what was going on, she figured she at least deserved that choice. 

"I want to stay," Annie answered immediately. "I want to know as soon as anything happens." 

"Okay," M.J. said, putting an arm over her daughter's shoulders, guiding her to the couch. The two of them sat down, and for a few minutes, watched the proceedings in silence, waiting for any word on Peter.

There was nothing. 

"Mom," Annie spoke up, struggling to find her voice as she proceeded, "h-how do y-you deal with this?" 

M.J. turned and looked at her daughter. She had wondered when they might have this conversation, thinking over exactly what she would say. Yet. now that the moment was here, she found it was harder than she thought to think of the right words. 

"I...I guess I learned to accept the fact that I could worry about him."

"What do you mean?" Annie asked, still wiping her tears as she spoke. "I thought that would be a given?" 

M.J. fully rotated her body on the couch so that she was fully facing her daughter. 

"Annie, have I ever told you about the first time I found your dad after a big battle?" she asked. 

Her daughter shook her head, prompting her to continue. 

"We were only a few years older than you," she began. "We were on a trip to Europe, and your dad had been tricked by a bad guy into making a mistake, and he was trying to correct it. Unfortunately, that meant fighting an army of drones at the Tower of London."

Annie's eyes went wide. "How did he make it out of that?" 

M.J. smiled. "Because he's your dad," she answered. "He knew mine, your uncle Ned's and so many other's lives were on the line that day, and he found a way to win."

"So, what happened when he did?" Annie asked. The conversation seemed to be distracting her at least a little, as her tears had stopped coming. 

"As soon as I knew we were in the clear, I just knew one thing," M.J. said, "I had to find him. I had to see for myself that he was okay. I ran all the way from the Crown Jewels Vault to the bridge itself, and there he was: limping, his suit all tore up and burnt, but alive. Without even thinking, I ran and through my arms around him. Of course, because he;s your dad, all he could think about at first was if I and everyone else was okay." 

Annie let out a small laugh in response to this. "Yeah, that sounds like dad," she said. 

"That was the day your dad gave me that old broken necklace," M.J. added, referring to the Black Dahlia necklace that somehow had survived all these years. "It was also the day I knew that I would worry about your dad forever. I wouldn't have admitted it at the time, but I knew I always wanted to be there for him, to make his job easier. I wanted to be the one who reminds him of what he was fighting for every day, and that meant that I needed to accept that there would be times when I would worry like crazy about him." 

"How do you deal with that though?" Annie asked. 

"Because I also chose to believe that, sometimes against all hope, that he was going to make it back to me," M.J. answered. "Annie, what you're feeling, what's going through your mind right now...it's okay. There's nothing wrong with worrying about your father, but you have to believe that, somehow, he's going to find his way back to us."

Annie sniffed, wiping her eyes once more as she was clearly fighting a renewed bout of tears. "I can do that," she said. M.J. recognized the same stubborn but determined confidence she had as a teenager in her daughter's voice. Annie was truly a mix of her and Peter: stubborn, determined, but also kind and always wanting to help out. She couldn't be more proud. 

M.J. dared to look towards the TV. 

"Annie, look," she said, pointing to the footage of Peter finally emerging from the scene. His red and black suit was a hundred different levels of torn and tattered, but he was alive. Raxton had been apprehended, his unconscious golden body being hauled away, likely to the Raft. 

"He did it," Annie said, her voice just barely above a whisper. 

"He sure did," M.J. said, turning to her daughter and putting an arm around her, pulling her close. "Because he knows his girls are waiting for him." 

Annie smiled the brightest smile she had all night to this point. 

"C...Can I stay up until dad gets back?" she asked meekly. 

"Of course you can," M.J. said, smiling at her daughter. 

After the hard lesson she'd had to learn tonight, she figured her daughter more than deserved it.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it! 
> 
> Please, stay safe and healthy! Continuing to pray for you all. 
> 
> "My son, do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight..." Proverbs 3:21-22


End file.
